Conflicted Donald

William B. Turner

The so called president, Donald Trump, is now joining in the hallelujah chorus from the far right trying to discredit Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating likely misconduct by various persons from Trump’s campaign during the election last year, and now increasingly the Donald’s shady business dealings, and presumably his probable obstruction of justice in firing James Comey from his position as director of the FBI.

Video is circulating of the Donald pointing out that Mueller and Comey are supposedly good friends and that several of the lawyers working under Mueller have various connections to Hillary Clinton.

The Donald and his minions killed irony hours after he took office. They have only been whipping the corpse ever since. “Irony” does not begin to capture the absurdity of Donald Trump accusing anyone else of having a conflict of interest. The man has been a walking conflict of interest since the moment he became president. The pot calling the kettle black. People in conflicted huts should not throw stones. Any and every relevant platitude you can thing up. The enormity of the hypocrisy beggars description. This from the man who issued an executive order prohibiting admission to the United States by foreigners from several predominantly Muslim countries under the pretext of national security, but – whooops! – left off of the list countries where he has business interests. Just a coincidence, I’m sure. From a man who owns a hotel in Washington, D.C. that is suddenly the preferred destination for foreign diplomats. From a man who charges the Secret Service for golf cart rentals at the golf club he owns and has visited at least weekly since taking office.

It is difficult to come up with strong enough terms to condemn this nonsense.

More specifically, we need to recall the ugly episode last year in which the Donald stated publicly that the judge with Mexican ancestry who was hearing the case against Trump University had a conflict of interest because the Donald had proposed to build a wall at the Mexican border. What this tell us is what we already knew – that the Donald knows pretty much nothing about what constitutes a conflict of interest, or about law and legal proceedings.

The good news is that another thing the Donald doesn’t understand is integrity. Robert Mueller has more integrity in his toenail clippings than the Donald has destroyed by his mere presence in his misbegotten life.

It also bears pointing out another thing that we already knew: our “conservatives” in the United States are nothing of the sort. Real conservatives take pride in acting on principle, without regard for political consequences. They are usually not very successful in politics as a result. Modern Republicans in the U.S., of course, care only about political consequences and have not a single principle to their collective names.